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From: "Dave Korn" <dave DOT korn AT artimi DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: username should be lower-case for $USER
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 16:38:55 -0000
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On 09 January 2007 16:25, David Smiley wrote:

> I am new to Cygwin.  I noticed that the $USER environment variable has my
> username in upper-case.  So it is "DSMILEY".  On unix based hosts I log
> into, it is always lower-case.  So if I try to SSH to another machine where
> I have the same login name, I can't let SSH automatically default to $USER
> because the case isn't right.  *Even if* Windows user names are case
> sensitive and so there is a difference between DSMILEY and dsmiley (are
> they?, I don't know) I think $USER should be made to be all lower-case to be
> consistent with unix environments.

  It would /not/ be consistent with unix environments.  Just because *you*
haven't used one with capitals in usernames does *not* mean they do not exist.
The Opengroup posix spec quite explicitly allows different cases:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap03.html#tag_03_
426



    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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